The importance of socially responsible marketing practices on the healthy food market from the perspective of students

Abstract

It is widely believed that young people are not overly concerned about their health or that they take excessive care of their eating habits. However, marketing experts see them as an extremely important and potentially large market, and consider all socially responsible business initiatives as long-term investments that will increase the value of the company. In the healthy food market, marketing practices are among the most important activities of socially responsible business. The purpose of this study is to explore the importance of different socially responsible marketing practices on the healthy food market. The questionnaire was administered to 519 students and the results were analysed using latent class analysis (LCA). Research results confirm the importance of understanding the influence of key demographic variables (gender and household income) on customers’ perceptions of socially responsible marketing. An important limitation of the research is the number and selection of socially responsible marketing practices. There are only a few studies that segment the market based on socially responsible marketing practises. A suggestion for future research is to use longitudinal data with more marketing practices tested.